Second Baseman A Survivor

After Injuries And Family Tragedy, Reese's Emotional Recovery Is Ongoing.

March 1, 2006|By Juan C. Rodriguez Staff Writer

JUPITER — Tearing a thumb ligament and missing the final two months of your first major league season isn't tragic. Neither is suffering the same injury on your other hand five years later and missing all but 37 games.

The rib-cage strain and shoulder problem that limited Pokey Reese to 351 at-bats the past three seasons were painful only in the physical sense. Words like pain and hurt and tragedy have a different connotation for Reese.

Pain is losing the mother of his first child in a car accident. Hurt is losing the mother of his second child while in labor with another man's baby. Tragedy is learning your toddler witnessed the murders of his maternal grandmother and great-grandmother.

"What I went through in the past, I wouldn't put that on nobody," Reese said.

He's never had to. Exposed to enough death, poverty, drugs and alcohol to collapse even the strongest spirit, Reese endures.

That's why the Marlins have every reason to think he will be healthy as he enters his 10th big-league season. That he will be a key member of the middle infield. That he will make those around him better.

"You've got to root for the guy when you see what he's been through just to survive eight or nine years in the big leagues," said former Marlins manager Jack McKeon, Reese's skipper with the Reds from 1997-2000. "He'll give me a big hug and tell me he loves me, and I feel the same way about him."

McKeon, who Reese said is like a father to him, was with the Marlins 21/2 seasons and spent much of that time trying to reunite with the former infielder. Reese signed with the Mariners before last season and was unable to take so much as one at-bat.

He underwent two surgeries to shave a protruding collarbone that, coupled with a frayed labrum, made his once cannonlike arm go haywire. His throws to first were short, long. The May operation didn't get him back on the field, so Reese had a second procedure in August that ended his chance of playing in a Mariners uniform.

"It hurts because you want to try to get out there and help the team win, and I wasn't able to do that," said Reese, who still earned $1.2 million in 2005. "Injuries are part of the game, but I'm over that now, hopefully."

His emotional recovery is ongoing.

Reese grew up in Columbia, S.C., where he shared a two-bedroom, dirt road dwelling that housed as many as 10 family members. A well half a mile away provided the lone water supply. Reese's father, Calvin Sr., wasn't a fixture in the household. Once a minor-leaguer in the Pirates organization, he later struggled with drugs and alcohol. Father and son have since reconciled.

A gifted quarterback who could have played college football, Reese was the Cincinnati Reds' first-round pick in 1991 and received a $200,000 signing bonus. He justified the selection by winning a pair of Gold Gloves for McKeon's Reds in 1999-2000.

"He does all the little things that help you win a game," McKeon said. "That's the thing I loved about him."

Still working his way through the minors, Reese faced the first in a cruel set of events. His girlfriend, Tieronay Duckett, died in a 1993 car accident. The couple's daughter, LaBresha, was 4 months old. Reese says she looks just like her mom.

Three years later, Reese learned the mother of his son, Naquawan, died from complications during childbirth. Now 13 and residing with Reese's sister in Charlotte, N.C., Naquawan initially lived with his maternal grandmother and great-grandmother.

On Christmas Eve 1997, the two women were murdered in front of him. The killer was captured and convicted.

"Once I talk about it, I don't want to keep harping on it," Reese said. "I try to forget, but every spring training I have to [talk about it]. It comes up all the time, but it's pretty much on the backburner now."

Just like the words pain, hurt and tragedy mean something different to Reese, so do the terms strength, survival and perseverance. They have to mean a little more to Reese.